Research? Yes, please . . . Part 1

June 20, 2013: According to the website ClinicalTrials.Gov, maintained by the FDA and National Institutes of Health (NIH), 147,537 human, or clinical, research studies are underway in 184 countries around the world on everything from new treatments for cancer, pain and schizophrenia to skin rashes. 360 of them are on cannabis; 247 of those are being conducted in the United States.

Worldwide, 56 of the 360 studies are on pain, 42 on multiple sclerosis, 29 on malignancy. Four are on Alzheimer’s disease and 2 on ALS.

Of the 247 studies being conducted in the US, 27 are on pain, 22 on multiple sclerosis, 22 on malignancy—or cancer—and 2 on Alzheimer’s disease. Many of the studies are on Sativex, the prescription cannabis extract now undergoing Phase 3 and 4 clinical trials in the U.S. pending FDA approval. Of the remaining 176 trials, 100 are on are on treating cannabis dependence or the symptoms of withdrawal after stopping cannabis use.

Twenty of the 113 trials being conducted outside the U.S. are being done by Israeli researchers, making Israel No. 2 in the world in research on cannabis, followed by France, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, the Czech Republic and other countries.

The 360 clinical trials on cannabis total 0.00249%—not even one tenth of one percent—of those 147,537 clinical trials.

It is a very odd situation, made even stranger when we consider that a great deal of information on cannabis and its effects on a variety of different medical conditions and problems has accumulated that strongly indicates that cannabis could be an extremely beneficial medical treatment.

Take Lou Gehrig’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) for example. ALS is a motor-neuron disease that causes progressive paralysis and death, usually within 3 to 5 years of diagnosis, with only a very few people living much beyond that.

However, a number of people with ALS who use marijuana to help with their symptoms have survived for more than 15 years after they were diagnosed. A few animal studies and such anecdotal reports led researchers at University of Washington School of Medicine to suggest in a 2001 paper published in the American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care that “In areas where it is legal to do so, marijuana should be considered in the pharmacological management of ALS.”

Unfortunately, it’s cannabis we’re talking about. And because it’s cannabis, the amount of research investigating observed effects like those has been limited at best.

We have also seen an astonishing reduction in life-threatening seizures in children who have failed every prescription anti-epileptic medication, in some cases completely eliminating them using low-dose cannabis extracts. Videos of their responses as well as a Washington Post report on cannabis as a treatment for seizures can be viewed at www.amarimed.com.

The successful use of cannabis as a treatment for intractable seizures will be the subject of a CNN special report hosted by Dr. Sanjay Gupta in early August, highlighting the Colorado patients who have benefited so greatly from cannabis as a treatment. We think this report will fundamentally change the national conversation on medical cannabis.

Stay tuned for more. This is going to get very interesting.

Alan Shackelford, M.D., graduated from the University of Heidelberg School of Medicine and trained at major teaching hospitals of Harvard Medical School in internal medicine, nutritional medicine and hyperalimentation and behavioral medicine. He is principle physician of Intermedical Consulting, LLC, and Amarimed of Colorado, LLC.  He can be contacted at amarimed.com.